The Daniel Plan: A Social Cure for a Social Disease

By Mark Hyman, MD

At the Saddleback Church in California, an innovative community-based approach to weight loss and health has helped thousands of participants. In the first of a series of special blogs for Everyday Health, physician and author Mark Hyman, MD, writes about the plan he helped create.

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One in two Americans has pre-diabetes or diabetes — that is every other person in America. Twenty-five percent of diabetics and ninety percent of pre-diabetics are not diagnosed. Caring for them will cost $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

This is a global problem. From 1983 to 2001, worldwide diabetes prevalence increased from 35 million to 366 million, and it is projected to grow to 552 million in 2030. Ninety- five percent of diabetes cases are lifestyle-induced type 2 diabetes. The solution to our diabetes epidemic will not come from within the health care system. It will not come from a pill bottle or the blade of a scalpel. We cannot bypass the fact that this is a lifestyle disease and cannot be solved by better or more medication.

Doctors graduate medical school knowing more about treating malaria than treating obesity — or what I call diabesity. When the collective cost of diabesity-related disease (including heart disease, cancer, dementia, strokes, infertility, depression and more) is accounted for, it is the single biggest contributor to our health care costs and our national debt.

In the face of those seemingly insurmountable statistics, I had an insight after working with physician Paul Farmer in Haiti where he built the model of "accompaniment," which uses community health workers and peer support to create the conditions that led to health.

The insight was this: that the community could be the cure.

An Unexpected Solution to Diabetes, Obesity, and Chronic Disease

One year ago, in partnership with Rick Warren from Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, and two other doctors (Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Mehmet Oz), I helped launch The Daniel Plan — a social experiment to learn if community support was more effective than medication or conventional medical care for treating and reversing disease and creating health.

The Daniel Plan is a wellness program delivered through small groups in the church. Rick Warren’s congregation of 30,000 met every week in 5,000 small groups. That was the "secret sauce." The program is named after the biblical story of Daniel and his small group of men who refused to consume royal food and wine. By eating vegetables and water, "they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food," according to Daniel 1:15.

In the first month 15,000 people signed up, and over the last year they have lost an estimated 250,000 pounds — or the equivalent of 10 tractor-trailer trucks loaded with soda. Over 6000 people spontaneously joined from around the country. There have been over half a million visits to the website from 189 countries. Hundreds of churches from around the country have called to participate and build programs for their own congregations.

The program is based on functional medicine — a way of treating chronic disease through lifestyle-based systems solutions. It is the science of creating health, not treating specific diseases. Disease goes away as a side effect of creating health. That delivered within small groups via The Daniel Plan was the lever that moved mountains — of donuts, ribs, soda and more!

Not only were there estimated weight reductions of 250,000 pounds but also equal reductions in medication use, hospitalizations, and doctor's visits. And it was free.

The Daniel Plan: Community Is the Cure

In a survey after 10 months of the program, participants reported the following:

An average weight loss of 13.5 pounds (18 pounds for those who said they followed the program closely)

72 percent of those who wanted to lose weight did

53 percent reported increased energy levels

34 percent reported better sleep

27 percent reported improvement in blood work

20 percent reported improvement in blood pressure

11 percent reported reduction in medications

31 percent reported improvement in mood

Those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight as those who did it alone.

Here was the big insight for me: the community is the cure and the group is the medicine.

We created an interactive curriculum delivered through online education, videos, articles, recipes, and webinars, all done in small groups and community events. We did this at Saddleback by changing what was served at Bible breakfasts, the menus in the Refinery (the student ministry facility), and even in people's homes.

We didn’t treat disease. We didn’t create a weight-loss program. We taught people self-care. Combining that with caring for each other, they created a small miracle – something health care or health care reform has not been able to achieve.

This is the seed of a bigger possibility. In our own communities, we can support each other to take back our health.

An old African proverb says that if you want to travel swiftly, travel alone, but if you want to travel far, travel together.

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our diabesity epidemic.

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